Seth Milner wrote:And you've still ducked my question.
"What does it (the Bible) mean then, when it says man shall not lie with a man as he would a woman?
If that were written in any venue, what, specifically does or would that mean?
It means no homosexual sex. The Old Testament hath spoken.
But it that the final word of Christianity?
The Old Testament has many other rules that would horrify Christians if they bothered to read them. Requirements to kill people for wearing two types of cloth, trimming their beards etc. Rules on when to sell your daughter as a sex slave. Er, "concubine" or "handmaiden" depending on the version of the Bible.
And so they declare that the Old Testament Mosaic covenant rules are no longer in effect, replaced by the New Testament's New Covenant.
The problems here:
- Many Christians still cherry-pick Old Testament the rules that match their opinions and declare them sacrosanct, while dismissing the rest.
- Mr.B takes it one step further and has some obscure mathematical formula where on some days he'll declare the entire Old Testament to be not part of Christianity at all, and others where he'll quote from it to prove his claims.
- The New Testament does not record Jesus saying anything at all about homosexuality. Given how important some Christians think the issue is, and given that he was teaching his worldview on every other subject, you'd think he'd mention it if he had a big problem with it.
- Christ's New Commandment,
repeated over and over, was that everyone must love on-another. Not referring to sex, but this was a big change from the Old Testament commandments to kill all the non-believers, kill their children, kill anyone who wears multiple cloth types or trims their beards, etc. That the rule against homosexuality was dropped along with all the rest, does not sound unreasonable.
- On the other hand, Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, issued a decree against homosexuality.
- Again, Christians cherry-pick this according to their opinions and phobias. Mr.B for example considers this decree sacrosanct, while utterly dismissing the decree in the same letter strictly forbidding women from speaking in church.
- In any case, the religion of Jesus Christ was a Jewish doomsday cult, but still Jewish. It slowly evolved over the next century into it's own distinct religion, much of that change steered by Paul. Important elements like Christ's resurrection and ascension, didn't show up in New Testament writings until centuries later. Many competing Christian books, beliefs and practices were edited out and forbidden in synods over the next 350 years. Bits were added. Elements like the Star of Bethlehem are still being added in modern times. Which brings me to the biggest problem I have with modern pop-culture-Christians: Given the evolution of the religion since Christ, are they really Christian? If I were to become Christian, why would I choose modern (say, post 350AD) Christianity over the beliefs and practices of Christians at the time of Christ's death?
for a thousand years, roughly from 500CE to 1500CE. This is before the Protestants split off, and before the east-west schism, so we're talking the bulk of mainstream Christianity."
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